Planning

Turn forecasts into optimized inventory and supply plans.

The Planning module is where demand forecasts turn into action. It shows your projected stock levels, reorder points, and supply orders over time, giving you a clear picture of what needs to be ordered, when, and in what quantity. Planning supports both Make-to-Stock (MTS) and Make-to-Order (MTO) strategies and lets you toggle Flowlity's optimization engine to dynamically compute optimal inventory policies. In short, this is where you answer: "Given the forecast and our inventory policies, how will our stock evolve — and what orders should we place, and when?"

Dimensions

Like the Demand module, Planning offers a Dimension toggle in the top-right corner:

• Product — Browse every product for the selected site with its reference and name. This is the default and most granular view.

• Tag — View planning data aggregated by tag, useful for reviewing stock health at a higher level (e.g. by product family or ABC class).

Views and filters

Built-in views help you focus on what matters most:

• Default view — The standard product list with all planning data.

• Stockout — Surfaces products at risk of running out of stock.

• Overstock — Highlights products with excess inventory.

You can create additional custom views using the + button.

The filter bar lets you search by name or reference, and filter by Tags, Suppliers, Alerts, and more. Filtering by alerts is especially useful to prioritize items that need intervention. The Planning module defines the following alert types:

• Above optimal stock — Projected stock exceeds the Stock Max at some point, indicating overstock risk.

• Below optimal stock — Projected stock falls below the Stock Min, indicating a stockout risk if not corrected.

• Out of stock — Stock projection drops to zero — a critical alert to address.

• Expiring stocks — Some inventory is projected to expire before it can be consumed (when shelf-life is tracked).

• Possible outlier (demand) — Recent actual demand was abnormally high and may distort planning.

• Possible shortage (demand) — A period of zero or low sales that may indicate lost sales due to having had no stock.

See Alerts for more on how alerts work across the platform.

Product detail view

Clicking on a product opens its planning detail view — accessible via the Planning tab (you can switch between Demand and Planning for the same product). It is split into a chart and a data table.

Chart

The chart visualizes your stock trajectory and supply orders over a configurable time range (displayed in weeks or months). The stock projection is shown as a dotted line, firm orders as dark bars, and planned orders as light bars. The area between Flowlity Min and Flowlity Max appears as a green shaded band. The following series can be toggled:

• Stock — Your projected stock level over time, based on current demand forecasts and planned orders.

• My Stock Max — Your manually defined maximum stock target.

• Flowlity Min — The AI-computed minimum stock level (dynamic safety stock).

• Flowlity Max — The AI-computed maximum stock level.

• Firm supply orders — Orders that have been confirmed and committed (shown as dark bars).

• Planned supply orders — Orders recommended by Flowlity that are not yet validated (shown as light bars).

• Expiring stock — Highlights inventory projected to expire (for products with shelf-life tracking), showing when expiration causes a drop in usable stock.

• Events — External events that may affect planning.

The area between Flowlity Min and Flowlity Max represents the optimal stock corridor — keeping your stock within this band minimizes both stockout risk and overstock cost. When the stock projection goes outside this band, it triggers the above/below optimal stock alerts.

Data table

Below the chart, a table breaks down the planning data by period. Key rows include:

• Final Forecast — The demand forecast feeding into the planning calculation (coming from the Demand module).

• My Supply — The total supply for each period, composed of Firm Orders (confirmed POs from your ERP) and Order Recommendations (Flowlity's planned orders). If a product can be sourced from multiple suppliers, each supplier's recommendations appear as a separate line. A small Flowlity logo next to a value means it is the original suggestion; a pencil icon means you have manually overridden it.

• My Stock Max — Your manual maximum stock target per period.

• Flowlity Max / Flowlity Min — The AI-optimized stock boundaries.

• Stock — The projected stock level, color-coded: values in red indicate stock below the minimum threshold, green indicates healthy levels.

• Stock Coverage in days — How many days of demand your current stock can cover.

Periods that fall within a Frozen Horizon are highlighted with a blue background. In a frozen period, existing orders are locked and Flowlity will not generate new recommendations. You can fix or unfix a horizon by right-clicking a period in the grid (see Simulating and modifying the plan below).

Use the gear icon at the top-right of the grid to show additional columns — for example Stock Min, Stock Max, or Stock Coverage (days) — to verify the plan meets your policy targets. Click the info (i) icon near the product name to open a sidebar with product details, where you can switch the unit of measure (e.g. view the plan in pallets instead of pieces) or review product master data.

Simulating and modifying the plan

You can click directly on any planned order quantity in the grid and override it with a new value. The stock projection line updates in real time on the chart, letting you test "what-if" scenarios — for example, reducing a recommended order and immediately seeing how close stock dips to the minimum. An edited value shows a lock icon, meaning Flowlity's nightly computation will not overwrite your change. You can revert to Flowlity's original suggestion at any time by clearing your override (the Flowlity logo reappears).

At the top of the product detail view, two actions are available:

• Optimize — Runs Flowlity's optimization engine to recompute the supply plan for this product on demand. After optimization, you can choose to save or discard the new suggestions. This is useful after significant forecast or strategy changes when you don't want to wait for the nightly batch run.

• Review — Marks the product as reviewed, part of the validation workflow before releasing orders.

Actions

• Keyboard navigation — Use the left/right arrow keys to cycle through products without returning to the list.

• Fix / unfix horizon — Freeze the plan up to a certain period so that committed orders are not changed by future recomputations. Unfix when you want Flowlity to re-optimize those periods.

• Export — Download planning data to CSV. See Downloads for more details.

When to use it

Use Planning after reviewing your demand forecasts. Check projected stock levels to confirm your supply plan is aligned with expected demand, investigate products where stock falls outside the Flowlity Min/Max corridor, and validate the orders Flowlity recommends before moving them to Supply Orders. Use alert filters to prioritize — for example, start with "Out of stock" alerts to address the most critical risks first.

Learn more

• Views and filtering — How views, filters, and custom views work.

• Inventory strategies — The five strategies and when to use each.

• Buffer policies and safety stock — Service levels and the Flowlity Min/Max corridor.

• KPIs — Add KPI columns to sort and filter the product list.

• Supplier constraints and order management — How constraints shape order generation.

• Comments — Collaborate on products via the comment panel.

• Set up and manage views — Create and organize custom views.

• Configure your inventory strategy — Choose and configure a strategy.

• Review and validate supply orders — Review planned orders and release them.

• Alerts — Alert types and how to act on them.

• Downloads — Export planning data.